#metaplots

[jeannereames]

Hello again, Dr. Reames. This post about the hero's journey across world cultures but especially in Ancient Greece has been going viral on tumblr. As both a writer of fiction set in the ancient world and an academic, do you think the hero's journey holds any merit? Especially in regards to the Illiad?

So first, thank you for that link and sorry for the delayed reply. I enjoyed reading the post, and agree with her for the most part, but there is a very useful comment (I’m not sure I’d quite call it a rebutting) from Ian Robinson in the notes. His reply offers several useful points about, et al., masterplots and correctives to her take on Campbell, which is a bit narrow, although the Frazier/Campbell/Jung approach to myth has long been recognized as problematic, beginning with Levi-Strauss. So I’d suggest that those who read her post also read his comment, as he gives some good additional bibliography. There are some other good comments, but I’d specifically point to that one. Unless I really misremember Campbell, I don’t think he’s suggesting the Hero’s Journey is the only sort of myth out there. That would be oversimplifying him and creating a stick-man argument, which is where I might ding her analysis.

Walter Burkert (and his students, et al.) have noted that similarity in myths may owe more than a bit to some basic similarities in human experience due to human biology. So, we get a goodly number of coming-of-age stories/myths and accompanying rites of passage. Similarly, marriage is another commonality. There’s only one culture that doesn’t have marriage (if my anthro class memories serves); but what “marriage” entails, and who may marry whom, varies quite a lot over cultures. Death and funerals/mourning are another commonality strongly hedged by culture-specific details, along with birth and fertility rites. We can include also anniversary and commemorative rites, feasting and fasting, even water rituals. These all cross the globe in myth and religion. Thus, our very humanness produces similarities of experience, although details are shaped by culture.

Additionally, throughout history, human beings have tended to look for points of commonality when facing difference—a purchase to grab onto, if you like. We’ve been doing this for millennia, right down to: “Your god seems like my god, just with a different name.” Difference is occluded to focus on the similarity.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It promotes connection…and empathy. It’s only problematic when difference is not just ignored but erased and replaced. That happens too. The Greeks (and later Romans) were notorious for ignoring other people’s names and categories in favor of their own… but so were the Egyptians, and the Chinese. This is not simply a white Western/European fault. It’s a Center-Periphery phenomenon. And it may be the height of white Western/European privilege to assume they’re the only ones guilty of doing it!

All that said, we do find some common … themes? ... across myths. Trickster figures, for instance—perhaps because they make us laugh. But a culture that doesn’t have one isn’t “lacking,” nor do all tricksters look/act the same. Humor can be a very cultural thing. That’s just one example of a “semi-universal” mythical motif.

So, in short, I don’t see a problem with utilizing the Hero’s Journey as a useful frame in storytelling. But I would say that we may need to learn new stories too, as writers.

My current WIP (work-in-progress) is a 6-volume epic fantasy that turns the conquest narrative on its head. One (of the two) main characters transforms from “Master of Battles” to “Mother of Peace.”

Writing it has presented me with some narrative-arc struggles, most notably writing “battles that aren’t.” E.g., an expected battle that doesn’t come to pass/is short-circuited in some way. I mean to challenge the notion that “glorious conflict/combat” is a necessary conclusion for a story arc. Yet that runs the risk of annoying readers who complain of bait-and-switch. Nonetheless, the point IS that a peaceful solution may be the true victory. How to do that involves maintaining enough narrative TENSION even if battle isn’t the resolution of that tension.

That’s a different sort of story, and entails bucking millennia of narrative expectations. Of course there are other forms of story (metaplots) that don’t even involve a (big) battle at all, but I’m specifically trying to subvert that one. That means I must rethink dramatic tension. (Hopefully successfully.)

In any case, I offer it as an example of the struggle any storyteller faces when swimming against the current of reader/listener/viewer expectations. Especially when those expectations are formed by the freight of human storytelling tradition. We are “programmed,” if you will, to expect certain things out of any given plot arc. One ignores that—or in my case, deliberately flaunts it—to one’s peril.

[windwenn]

X-files metaplot WHO i only know dana scully

[marrowcrunch]

Beckett dot jpg

[probablybadrpgideas]

Created an idea in my dreams which I will attempt to replicate as best as possible

the best thing about RPGs is that all the time

Chin-Chin the french ogre hon hon baguette t=hkeijns

[wallbeatjournal]

Are true riverdale fans of the opinion it is a very good and nearly flawless show or does being a true riverdale fan mean being able to mock writing choices

it's long-running serial television plotted a season/half at a time so definitely not even "nearly" flawless.

BUT. i'm not doing combat with the writing team. i'm not actively reading against the text the way i have to in order to enjoy something like supernatural or the 90s robin comics or the fucking sopranos, which are patriarchal christiancore copworld rapeworld white supremacist horrorshows that hate their minority audiences, with like 2 good creatives involved and martyring themselves to fight the good fight on sparse rare installments if you try to approach them sincerely.

riverdale writing staff are like a favorite smart problematic tumblr mutual to me. I don't always like what's on their blog or who they're referencing. but we're in the same community and i'm interested and inspired and i trust their agenda overall, even when i see shit i wouldn't have fucking posted. but bc i'm not being condescended to or actively spited i'm not gonna condescend to or spite them, you know?

i expect rvd to age like twin peaks (another very uneven, highly referential serial juggling a couple of intensely cool metanarratives on top of its core story). and twin peaks fandom mocks twin peaks all the time. twin peaks includes some CLUNKY shit. it's kitsch. it's camp. it has a second season that is largely ASS. james is there. and on top of that it also includes some genuinely offputting-to-me stuff that just bothers me to sit through, even though i feel like i understand and respect what they're going for with it. i just don't want to watch someone sweep the fucking bar for minutes and minutes as entertainment. OK!!?

...so yeah. mock riverdale but in the right spirit. is that an answer? do i sound like i'm chugging the flavoraid koolaid fresh-aid? probably.

[caramellody]

I could go on and on and spiral about a LOT of things relating to NSBU:

The NATURE of the nsbu movie and what THAT could entail and what THAT could mean for the characters in this movie

The way at how everyone in the main cast AND barsimmion follow the themes of the lack of change and stalemate in life

[funeralprocessor]

RIFTS is a silly setting and a questionable game, but the art has always absolutely activated my neurons, and a big part of that is my boy Chuck Walton

His power armor/robot designs are some of my favorites ever.

[oliversgarden]

So I have this weird condition and due to it I currently cannot feel my left arm, it’s just extended pins and needles basically but without the pain. I think this is what John feels when he has control of Arthur’s arm, it’s sort of like an odd ghosting of using a limb that leaves a vaguely electric feeling anytime you touch or hold something. I also think he doesn’t know that this isn’t what people using bodies normally feel like and just thinks that it’s just how limbs work.

[casperatu]

putting Run a Battle of New York Chronicle higher and higher on my to do list by the day

[relleytrots]

Mind if I ask your thoughts on the Baali? No reason in particular, I just find them neat

Not at all, but if you like them you, uh, you may not like my answer. I've upset a few folx with my position on their fave bloodlines over the years...

I think they're superfluous. We have a theistic left hand cult already – gesturing at the Ministry, who made a lot more sense to me when I rediscoved Michael Aquino's Temple of Set – and they already suffer from coherency and appeal problems without having this other bloodline that has two thirds of their Discipline set.

I've never liked infernalism – I see it as a way to crowbar "worse monsters" into the game so there's always someone you can feel good and righteous about opposing, and if I could do my VTDA game over again without it, I would.

I've never liked any religious position as one clan or bloodline's hat. It just about works with the Ministry – they're the priesthood, you can only ever be laity – but that's not the way previous devs have implemented the matter. I also find the "re-Embrace, u change clan now" mechanic galling, undermining the definitive role of the clans in the setting and system.

If you're going to have vampire devil worship that gives you eldritch blasts and other strange powers, I think the Path of Evil Revelations and Dark Thaumaturgy (yuck, ick, bleff, that's its own problem) are a better template than a bloodline splat IMO.

Requiem showed us how well these things can work when they're hived off from the clan structure, and I think Cults of the Blood Gods builds on that in a way that has a lot of potential.

[dearminty]

red letter media but it's just me and my gf discussing why babylon 5 is everything deep space 9 tried to be but better... kinda want to write up a side by side breakdown bc as a bit of a connoisseur of 90s scifi serials, babylon 5 is one of the best I've seen and feels criminally underrated

[sluggybunny]

where is Beckett on your tag fav characters list?? It's like I don't even know who you are anymore!!! D: (kidding, kidding ilu bby)

ill have you know i heavily contemplated putting him on there

[marrowcrunch]

Extremely funny that despite V5’s efforts to flatten the Sabbat into a cartoonish always-chaotic evil puppy-kicking hivemind, the Week of Nightmares is still canon so they are STILL literally right about the Antediluvians being a threat to all existence, Sword of Caine stay winning forever ✌️

[tmagp]

Y'all ... I did not like today's episode at all.

[mel-155-a]

Hunter: The Vigil (2008)

Angels and computers have compatible software btw. They're made of the same stuff. My halo is filled with circuitry, and your memory stores are made of light.

[boneless-mika]

Sorry it’s late and I’m in pain so I’m unusually angry but I’m not impatient for not loving the first few episodes of tmagp btw